Kiev - Ten Communist rowboats blocked the exit of a squadron of NATO warships from a Ukrainian harbour, Channel 5 television reported Monday.

Demonstrators manning the craft had set up a patrol line in Odessa bay between the vessels and the open Black Sea, preventing NATO combat vessels from departing to participate in the US-led Sea Breeze 2008 international naval exercise.

Port officials had taken three boats into custody by mid-morning, but the blockade was continuing as Ukrainian police attempted to convince the protestors to move out of the way.

The anti-NATO activists were members of three extreme left-wing groups opposed to Ukrainian cooperation with the Western alliance.

Kiev- Ukrainian police confiscated videotape shot by a Russian television crew for a programme about a dispute within the Orthodox Christian church, Korrespondent magazine reported Friday.

The incident took place at Borispil airport in the Ukrainian capital Kiev after Artem Shirokov, a reporter for the Moscow-based TVTs television channel, attempted to board an aircraft home.

Ukrainian customs officers searching Shirokov's effects took into custody five videotapes shot by the Russian journalist and his crew of interviews with leaders of Ukraine's Orthodox Christian church.

Kiev  - The World Bank on Friday revised upwards Ukraine's predicted inflation rate for 2008 to 21.5 per cent, the Interfax news agency reported.

The bank had been predicting 17 per cent inflation, but galloping food and energy prices made that expectation unrealistic, said Ruslan Piontovsky, a bank spokesman.

The bank also suggested overall Ukrainian GDP growth will be at a relatively strong 6 per cent on the strength of demand for key Ukrainian export products such as steel, foodstuffs, and chemicals.

But growth would fall to between 4 and 5 per cent during 2009 and 2010, Pointkovsky said.

Kiev - Ukraine's pro-West government survived a no- confidence vote on Thursday leaving the deadlock in the country's parliament unchanged.

A parliament motion to sack a cabinet led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko obtained 174 votes in favour, with 226 ayes in the 450- house needed to throw her government out of their jobs.

The decision left the former Soviet republic's legislature at an effective standstill, with neither Tymoshenko's government nor the pro-Russia opposition able to form a majority.

The opposition had been pushing for the no-confidence vote as a way to resolve the impasse in the legislature, and as necessary given worsening economic conditions in the country.

Vienna  - Despite the experience of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, the Ukraine plans to build new nuclear power plants, its president Viktor Yushchenko said in Vienna Tuesday.

Ukraine was planning to complete additional reactors by 2013 in order to meet its energy needs, Yushchenko said during an official visit to Austria.

Although nuclear energy remained a sensitive topic in his country following the 1986 reactor meltdown in Chernobyl, "we want to show to the whole world that we are very responsible when it comes to nuclear energy use," he said.

Moscow/Kiev - A worker at Ukraine's embassy in Germany was arrested on charges of attempted smuggling of radioactive materials, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday.

The man and the security manager of a local bank were detained near the central Ukrainian city Cherkassy with radioactive metals in their possession worth 4.9 million dollars, police said.

According to people reports, the two suspects had been transporting uranium and cesium in an automobile.